Unlike Hà Nội where most new houses have a very historicist decorative design,
the new houses in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) are more modernist if not just utilitarian. And while the houses in Hà Nội are most often painted ochre or vermillion, there is a much greater use of other colors in HCMC. As in Hà Nội, most houses are "tube houses" in that they are very narrow but very long. Although I haven't confirmed this yet, it is said that these lots are narrow because property taxes are based on the width of the lot at the street line. In HCMC, I guess (without confirmation yet) that many of the new houses are designed by young architects trying out new ideas, and this is very good to see. This in contrast to the usual utilitarian modernist larger buildings in HCMC. These pictures can be viewed by clicking on the first or top picture in the album and then click "next" on each photo to proceed though the album in slide show fashion.

May 2012

16 May 2012

Long-time Việt Nam bloggers will remember Doug Young's blog, Virtual-Doug. He wrote extensively and beautifully about Việt Nam when he lived in Huế for a year and a half in 2005-2006. Since then, he and his wife Cindy have returned to Việt Nam several times, and Doug has accumulated a collection of beautiful photographs as well as experiences. He has continued to write about Việt Nam people and culture on his blog through the subsequent years from his retirement home in Texas, USA. Doug and Cindy also brought Việt Nam to their home by sponsoring a couple of Vietnamese young people to attend nearby graduate schools in Texas. Over the past few years, Doug has given us an opportunity in his blog to hear about the reactions of these young Vietnamese to life and culture in America.

Doug and Cindy are both veterans of the Vietnam War (known as the American War in Việt Nam), and Doug has been been exploring the misconceptions most Americans have accumulated about Việt Nam due to the long-held memories and media coverage of the war. Few veterans have written about Việt Nam as a country and as a people. Meanwhile Việt Nam has changed substantially as a modern developing country. Doug has filled that breech with a well-written book now available on Amazon. The book is titled Same River, Different Water: A Veteran's Journey from Vietnam to Viet Nam. The book also contains Doug's many beautiful color photographs, so it is not available in digital formats, such as Kindle.

Vietnam is defined by the war in American eyes. Việt Nam is the real country and its people, changed far beyond the war. Following is a review I contributed to the book's page on Amazon:

Same River, Different Water: A Veteran's Journey from Vietnam to Viet Nam is not a book about the Vietnam War (referred to as the American War in Viet Nam). Nor is it a collection of war stories. Rather, it is written by an American Vietnam War veteran to help change American perceptions derived from the Vietnam War, and to point us towards the modern developing country of Viet Nam. This is a book about American people and culture in relation to Vietnamese people and culture.

Douglas Young is an excellent writer, and he uses insightful stories to help us get beyond our old memories of the Vietnam war, and see a very much changed Viet Nam. Doug and his wife Cindy spent a year and a half living and teaching in Viet Nam, and they bring to us a Viet Nam most Americans either would not think about or imagine. Using beautiful photographs and excellent writing, they use their experiences there as a means to show the misconceptions Americans share, and how much Viet Nam has changed beyond those misconceptions.

Doug Young shows us that Viet Nam is a place worth returning to, visiting, or living in.

I highly recommend purchasing and reading this book, because it opens our eyes beyond the stereotypes we may have accumulated because of the war or our western culture.

06 May 2012

The normal niche for this blog is modernist architecture for Vietnamese houses. But I am currently in America, and I got to thinking about what how the typical architecture of American houses might be characterized.

There is a list of a hundred architectural house styles on Wikipedia, and I have seen examples of most of them in my travels around America and the world. As I was driving from California to Montana through Oregon, Washington, and Idaho recently, I noticed that the predominate house style, especially in the western states, is not on the list. If you think about it, what we remember in terms of house styles are memorable houses -- often large houses constructed and owned by the upper economic strata of society. Architects often design these houses with the distinctive styles listed. We ignore the normal common bland houses that most of us live in. Builders design these houses rather than architects. We don't even "see" them although they are ubiquitous.

In the western United States, the standard house is a simple rectangle in plan with a hipped or gabled roof with wide overhangs. Here is an example of one, built in Billings, Montana in the 1950s.

These houses were built everywhere following World War 2 in conjunction with the American baby boom. They are small (1,000 square feet or 93 sq. meters), with an unfinished basement in the northern states. Therefore they were cheap to build using the easily-available wood framing materials common in America.

The closest architectural style on the list is the ranch style, characterized as single-story with low rooflines. Although the typical ranch style house has an attached garage, many of the standard houses do not. Owners often added detached garages on their large lots later in life.

In my writings about Vietnamese houses, I have noted that they are a response to the context and conditions of Viet Nam. They are adapted to small narrow lots in densely-populated cities and towns. They use the ubiquitous masonry materials easily available in Vietnam. The typical American house is low and spread out, adapting to the much larger lot sizes available in low-density American suburbs, towns, and rural areas. They also reflect the much smaller family sizes of America where children starting their own families rent or buy separate houses, and the grandparents have their own houses or have moved to retirement communities. The American houses are simple and bland, which makes them affordable and usable.